Startup Fever Lives: Creative Capital’s Valley Tour Recap

Last week, I hit the Bay Area trifecta for an author: I had the honor and privilege of being invited to speak at Stanford, Berkeley and in front of a group of 100 of Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers at the Quadrus Center on Sand Hill Road.

The Quadrus event was the vision of John Montgomery, founding partner of the aforementioned law firm. One day last fall I got a call from John, who told me he loved the book because he thought it embodied the back-to-basics philosophy that the Valley needs to return to in order to thrive.

There was also a personal connection with John. During my research for the book, I interviewed his father, Parker Montgomery. Parker was the CEO of Cooper Laboratories, a successful pharmaceutical company backed by American Research & Development. Parker occasionally talked about Doriot to John but he never got the whole story about this mysterious guy that his father admired. That’s why he appreciated the book. “You connected the dots for me,” said John.

This is the kind of feedback that authors dream about, and I am grateful to John for reaching out to me and expressing his thoughts, and for putting this event together.

One other thought about this recent tour.

The startup dream is still alive at Stanford and Berkeley. About 100 folks showed up at my Stanford talk. Most of the audience was undergraduate computer science and engineering students. I spoke to a few of them afterwards and they told me they were interested in doing startups.

I also gave a talk to Jerry Engel’s class of MBA students at the Haas School. Jerry is Executive Director of the School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The founder of Google Earth spoke before me. And then I gave a talk about the history of innovation. I spoke to one of the students afterward and he told me he wanted to do a startup as well, and that many of his classmates were considering the same path.

Tomorrow I will post some of the remarks I made to the folks at Quadrus.